• Source: PRB

    The shifts in U.S. household composition over the last five decades have been striking, as the share of family households has declined and the share of nonfamily households has increased. In 1960, 85 percent of all households contained families, but by 2017, this share had dropped to 65 percent (see Table). Conversely, the share of nonfamily households more than doubled from 15 percent to 35 percent during this period. The types of households within the family and nonfamily categories have also shifted, with a consistent decline in the share of married couples with children and a steep and consistent increase in the share of people living alone. Since 1960, the shares of single-parent families and other nonfamily households more than doubled.

    So, John Burns asks whether the swiftly shifting population and household patterns may impact how – if they have fewer kids – people value homes and communities based on the quality of their school systems.

    The questions start there, and continue. What about house sizes? What about their design and engineering for lifelong health, safety, security, and privacy? What about the role of hybrid work-live routines? How about the geography of multi-cultural and multigenerational living? And how about an essential, almost unnoted, reality in the data of the 2020 Census – that growth in people and households and how and where they live and what they can spend is taking place in an almost inverse relationship to the kinds, the cost, and the valuation of market-rate housing and communities today’s builders and developers can pencil.

    That’s what makes the 2020s decade ahead all the more worth wanting to stick around and see what happens. Something’s got to give.

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